35 Years And $400 Million Later, The FCC Says It Finally Has Accurate Broadband Maps. Maybe.
from the can't-fix-a-problem-you-can't-measure dept
We’ve noted for decades how, despite all the political lip service paid toward “bridging the digital divide,” the U.S. doesn’t actually have any idea where broadband is or isn’t available. The FCC’s past broadband maps, which cost $350 million to develop, have long been accused of all but hallucinating competitors, making up available speeds, and excluding a key metric of competitiveness: price.
You only need to spend a few minutes plugging your address into the FCC’s old map to notice how the agency comically overstates broadband competition and available speeds. After being mandated by Congress in 2020 by the Broadband DATA Act, the FCC struck a new, $44 million contract with a company named Costquest to develop a new map, just unveiled for the first time.
According to the FCC, this new map is the first step in a long process to accurately identify where broadband is (or isn’t), kind of important for people making broad policy decisions:
“Our pre-production draft maps are a first step in a long-term effort to continuously improve our data as consumers, providers and others share information with us,” FCC chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said in a statement. “By painting a more accurate picture of where broadband is and is not, local, state, and federal partners can better work together to ensure no one is left on the wrong side of the digital divide.”
A first glimpse at the map shows many of the same problems we saw with the last map. It still doesn’t bother to mention price, a key metric in determining broadband accessibility. And it still claims service availability in a lot of locations that don’t have service. For example, I live a few miles from the center of Seattle under a Comcast monopoly, and the map still claims I can get Lumen (Centurylink) fiber:
Still, there’s several useful improvements this time around. For one, the FCC promises it will do a better job of holding ISPs accountable for false coverage claims. Two, the agency says it will stop using flawed methodology that declared an entire census block “served” with broadband if ISPs claimed that just one home in that census block could receive broadband.
That it took thirty years to get here tells you just how influential broadband industry lobbying has been. Telecom monopolies have spent decades lobbying against better maps and a more modern definition of broadband (currently 25 Mbps down, 3 Mbps up), knowing full well that a more accurate picture of competitiveness might give somebody in the federal government the crazy idea to try and fix it.
I’ve spent most of 2022 talking to states and city leaders trying to deliver better broadband, and most of them are very concerned about the challenge process the FCC is implementing to let third parties challenge industry claims.
Of particular concern is that many under-resourced, under-staffed, under-funded small ISPs, states, and municipalities won’t be able to afford to challenge industry claims, causing them to lose out on a once in a lifetime broadband funding opportunity made possible via the $50 billion in broadband subsidies created by COVID relief and infrastructure legislation:
“I think states that have their stuff together may be able to respond,” she said. “But states that don’t have strong broadband offices with a geographic information system (GIS) component will be hard-pressed to respond. I am hopeful the data will be more accurate from the ISPs, but the FCC left lots of wiggle room for them. Lots of it.”
Maine and New York, for example, have built their own elaborate broadband mapping and confirmation systems after decades of frustration with terrible FCC data. They have the staff, money, and resources to challenge false Comcast claims that they offer service in select areas.
But for every New York and Maine, there are countless states/cities/towns that will either lack the resources and expertise to file meaningful challenges, or lack the interest to stand up to monopolies. Which is to say it’s going to be an ongoing project to ensure the integrity of this data in the face of monopoly influence, and FCC history doesn’t leave a lot of room for optimism on that front.
The new maps will be used to prioritize who gets the billions in broadband funding coming down the road. And telecom monopolies are already busy exploiting state corruption, working overtime in a variety of ways all across the country to ensure the majority of that money goes to them, and not to absolutely any company, municipality, cooperative, and utility looking to challenge them.
The Biden FCC insists this is just the first step in a long process aimed at improving better data. And it’s a big improvement just to see the government admit that past data has been lacking. At the same time, it’s absolutely gobsmacking that 35 years and $400 million later and the federal government has only just started trying to use hard data to inform broadband policy decisions.
There’s a reason it took this long to get here, and it’s not simply because it was too difficult, expensive, or time consuming. It’s because U.S. telecom monopolies, and the armies of think tankers, consultants, lobbyists, and other proxy voices they employ, have waged a successful, multi-decade war to downplay monopoly power, gut federal oversight, and protect a very broken (but very profitable) status quo.
Filed Under: broadband, broadband maps, digital divide, fcc, gigabit, high speed internet, monopolies, telecom
Comments on “35 Years And $400 Million Later, The FCC Says It Finally Has Accurate Broadband Maps. Maybe.”
The "just one home" rule
Wouldn’t it be interesting if there was a requirement that ISPs who claim that an area is served when “just one home” is actually being served were then required to extend that service to the entire area? That might help with the “Oh, sure, we can add you, but it will cost you $40,000 up front” crap. After all, if they’re claiming they serve the area, actually serving the area should be part of the normal cost of doing business – in other words, they should put up or shut up.
Re:
there used to be these kinds of requirements embedded in many local franchise agreements, but those were largely killed off in a big vilification push when phone companies lobbied to ready the field for their entry into the TV sector.
Peeping Tom Evolved
Wouldn’t it be better to call ISP’s “Peeping Trons jacking-off in the corner”?
Thats probably on the new labels :p
Checked addresses of various homes I’ve owned in the past several years. New maps are better, but no where near accurate. Example: I’m currently receiving excellent 50/50 mbps service from a company that isn’t even listed in an area where at least three of the companies listed don’t actually provide service.
Re:
they’re still basing a lot of this on “advertised” speeds. Hopefully this gets corrected courtesy of challenges, but I’m hearing a lot of skepticism on the challenge process actually working.
@Karl,
You already know that Ziply Fiber is headquartered in Everett, so I’m wondering how come they haven’t hooked you up yet…
Re: ...
They don’t serve my neck of the woods in South Seattle, unfortunately. There’s conduit everywhere yet Comcast remains the only competitor here in much of “Silicon Valley North”
Re: Re:
The wife says I shouldn’t be mean, but…. we’re out on US 2, directly west of the Bolt Creek fire, and we’ve had Ziply for a couple of months now. You might want to remind them of your journalistic qualifications, and something about attention-getting public exposure.
I visited Skykomish this Saturday past, and noticed that the coffee shop up there had a Ziply router on the upper shelf behind the counter. Makes me wonder, who do they know that you don’t. 😉
bullshit! they’re only as accurate as the FCC allows them to be, providing they’re in line with what the businesses say! given the amount of money paid out by those businesses and who it’s paid to, the accuracy is about as close as i am to being an astronaut!!
They got mine right
They got my address right. At least the advertised speeds. Funny thing about those little green dots is the dot next to me has AT&T Fiber available & the pole that it comes from is closer to my home than theirs. But the lines for mine come from the other direction so, as the map shows, all AT&T can offer me is 25/5.
The only real broadband I can get comes from Comcrap. Comcrap knows this & it’s priced that way.
Looking at map
I live in Rural farming area.
They say the area is 100% covered.
Space exploration
Viasat
Hughes
DIDNT ask for that list.
NW fiber
Safelink wireless
Jab wireless
T mobile
Still didnt select wireless
Cableone
Lumen?
Thats the top 10.
10 miles north of me is another town and a nice road to it…ALL SAGEBRUSH.everything PAST that town is SAGE.
Looking over near the Northern mtns, Lots of skying..THERE IS NOT MOBiLE, but its cover on the map.
Easy fix so long as you have a spine
Seems like it would be really easy to solve this is those involved has spines and weren’t owned by the industry they’re tasked with oversight of: All federal funding to ISP’s is contingent upon them keeping an accurate and up to date database of which areas aren’t theoretically able to be connected but which are, down to the ‘per house’ level.
This information is regularly and randomly audited for accuracy by an independent third-party, and individual homeowners can also report violations should they be told that a house is connected only to find out that it isn’t, with any violations below a certain percentage of coverage treated as fraud perpetrated by the execs of the company with charges brought accordingly. Should the violations rise above a certain percentage then all federal grants and funding will be put on hold until the claimed coverage matches the actual coverage, with all of that paid for out of the ISP’s pocket.
Make is so they have a very good reason to care about accurate service maps and ISP’s would fill the things in themselves, and if you make it so that fraudulent data means execs paying the price personally they’d be a lot more interested in ensuring accurate numbers.
Check that math...
35 years? What? I see no indication of where this number came from, but 35 years ago was 1987. I’m not sure the term “broadband” even existed with its current non-literal meaning, and if it did, why would anyone have been trying to map it? It would be almost another decade before people generally believed the ISP market would expand much beyond computer enthusiasts.
It still doesn’t bother to mention price, a key metric in determining broadband accessibility.
…a company named Costquest to develop a new map…
Ok, it’s still pre-production but lol.